- Extended Support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will end on July 9, 2019.
- Extended Support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will end on January 14, 2020.
End of support means the end of regular security updates. With cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated and frequent, running apps and data on unsupported versions can create significant security and compliance risks. The 2008 family of products was great for its time, but we highly recommend upgrading to the most current versions for better performance, efficiency, and regular security updates.
The upcoming end of support milestone is a great opportunity to transform your applications and infrastructure to take advantage of cloud computing and the latest versions of SQL Server and Windows Server. Customers like
Allscripts rehosted dozens of applications running on thousands of virtual machines to Azure, where they can transform and develop new applications using more advanced Azure services.
We are pleased to share new options and tools to help you manage this transition to carry your organization through the next decade.
Migrate to Azure, get free Extended Security Updates
End of support is an ideal time to transform your IT estate with the cloud. But we know that it can be hard to upgrade everything before the end of support timeline.
To address this need, we are pleased to announce that Extended Security Updates will be available for free in Azure for 2008 and 2008 R2 versions of SQL Server and Windows Server to help secure your workloads for three more years after the end of support deadline. You can rehost these workloads to Azure with no application code change. This gives you more time to plan your future path, including upgrading to newer versions such as SQL Server 2017 or Windows Server 2016 and utilizing the rich set of platform and data services available in Azure.
You can also move your SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 deployments with no application code change and near zero downtime to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. It is a fully-managed database-as-a-service solution with industry leading SLAs and does not require future upgrades. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance will be generally available in early Q4 of this calendar year.
